As program manager of the Shared Source Initiative at Microsoft, Jason Matusow is responsible for coordinating Microsoft' global source licensing strategy. ZDNet UK caught up with him.
Q: Just over a year ago, Microsoft senior vice president Craig Mundie made his infamous comments about open source. Since then, Microsoft has been rolling out its Shared Source Initiative. How do you rationalize your Shared Source Initiative with Microsoft's views on open source?
A: One unfortunate thing we did was coming out against open source--we knew it would be controversial. There is a longstanding industry debate around source code and what role it plays. IT professionals have one point of view, developers have another, business decision makers have yet another and then hobbyists come at it from an entirely different direction again.
For a long time we were held up as being anti-open source. But the idea of Shared Source came about because of customers telling us: "I am able to do some things in open source because I have access to the source code, and I would like to be able to do the same thing with your code."
News source: ZDNet News - Microsoft warming to open source?
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